I read that the White House... (none / 0) (#203)
by crimebird on Sun Aug 24, 2014 at 01:18:05 AM EST
...is sending three people to attend Brown's funeral. I hope that is an indicator that Brown did not have a significant juvenile record and that there is tangible evidence he was a completely innocent victim. Because if it turns out that neither of those are the case, the White House is going to look...bad.

Unless Brown is St Terea in a hoodie the WH will look "bad" for trying to show some concern that he was gunned down for crossing the street improperly?

people really, really, really want Michael Brown to have a record. What's coming through is "it's okay - if he had a record, his life didn't matter anyway."

Try as I might, I just don't understand this, at all. I don't understand how the possibility of a juvenile record is supposed to get them from the tragedy of Michael Brown to the triumph of Darren Wilson. How, in any universe that is supposed to be civilized, can walking in the road be cause for a confrontation of that magnitude?

Why are they working so hard to feel okay about a death at the hand of someone who's supposed to be about "protect and serve?" Who was Darren Wilson protecting? Himself? How does running after someone and shooting at them fit into that category? Who was he serving? The community? How does firing bullets with no regard for people in the area serve them, or anyone?

What really just wants to make me vomit is finding out how many people think like "crimebird" does.

want him to have a record because it justifies in their own mind what happens. If he was an innocent victim they will have to reexamine everything conservatives have been telling them for years now--that the police don't make mistakes etc. This is a whole lot bigger in a lot of ways than just a shooting.

That if a white young man has a troubled youth, we still will not tolerate a police officer gunning them down for jay walking or petty theft. Consequences are supposed to be proportional to the actions for the children of white parents.

I am a white parent, that is how I know this outrage would not stand!

But the victim was black, his parents are black, and they must manage their social expectations differently because......

Some "people" don't want to convict an officer of a crime before all the facts are known.

People who want to use this trajedy to score racial points and confirm their theories are making huge assumptions and not bothering to wait for evidence. Then when this is pointed out you and others make statements about "republicans" and "tea partiers" revealing your own prejudices and lack of empathy for the other side.

You have no idea what happened other than a Cop shot a young black male.

How about we wait to find out and you stop shouting down theories that are based on just as much evidence as yours?

Last time I checked this is a legal blog were we presume innocence until guilt is proven.

IMHO Mr. brown threatened the officer on some level. Reports indicate he struck the officer. That is true or not. Whatever the case the question is did the officer apply deadly force when it was not necessary. Unfortunately for the victims family if that is the case it will probably be hard to prove and unfortunately for the officer if it isn't the case now because of media attention he will be prosecuted no matter how little evidence they have against him.

It is not unreasonable or racist to infer that Mr. Brown could have acted as he did in the convienence store when the officer hassled him for walking in the street.

In fact I would say that two youths walking down an empty street was not worth the time of a police officer even before the advantage of hindsight. I would also say this is a perfect example of why young black men feel they are constantly under unnecessary scrutiny from law enforcement. However if the officer was responding to the robbery or theft call this theory goes out the window. Again we'll wait and see.

If we assume the officer hadn't heard the call yet Mr. Brown probably (and with good reason) couldn't believe this cop was pestering him about something so silly and a confrontation began that ended tragically in a young mans death.

That's my theory. Could be true, could be untrue but me having it has nothing to do with racism and I'll wait to see what the facts show.

Obviously it's hard to leave ones feelings about law enforcement and race at the door but one can disagree on what happened here without being a racist.

Just like the Duke Lacrosse case presumptions based on the race of the victim and the officer have written a narrative of events that are not clearly backed up by the known facts. If we assume the worst, as was done then, we see a racist killing and anyone who defends the officer must have racist intentions because the facts of racism are already in place from this narrative. The idea that a white officer shot a black man kneeling with his hands up has no basis in facts but instead was established early on because it fit the most racist narrative that could be established. To me that narrative seems very unlikely at this point but we'll see.

insofar as the party tolerates the racist element that makes up a significant voting bloc within the party in order to get to 50.1% in any given election.

People seeking change from within are wonderful people when sincere, so if you can cut and paste your comments of outrage to the racist commenters in the Darren Wilson fundraiser site and the Gateway Pundit BS article on orbital explosion, it would be appreciated.

the Republicans actually acted that way of not convicting a cop before the facts come out I would be saying nothing. They have jumped on basically say this unarmed kid deserved to be killed. You need to go no further than some of the fact free posts on this site to see what is being said. And this isn't the first time. I mean I've even seen conservatives defend the guy that shot Jordan Davis in Florida because he said he was afraid because the kids were playing their music too loud in the car. That was another unarmed kid. That guy said he was afraid too didn't he? The message that conservatives are continually sending out there is that the life of a minority isn't worth as much as anybody's else's.

Well, it is true that I have little empathy for tea partiers. I live in an area where there are a lot of them and there's no agree to disagree with them. It's all about you have to agree with them 100% or you're an awful person out to destroy America. I have pointed out to them that they are actually being taken advantage of by a bunch of charlatans but it falls on deaf ears.

and if you actually read what I said above I said SOME conservatives. You went off on a tangent say it's all conservatives and I never said that. I same SOME. I really wish there were more like you who actually seem to want a debate on the issues.

I figure the conservatives have been riding this train for quite a few decades. It's their Frankenstein monster and they are the ones that need to deal with it.

I mean good grief even the statements about the children coming across the border were awful.

And when the facts are shaky, disappeared, or just permanently unavailable there is circumstantial evidence:

Circumstantial evidence is evidence that relies on an inference to connect it to a conclusion of fact--like a fingerprint at the scene of a crime. By contrast, direct evidence supports the truth of an assertion directly--i.e., without need for any additional evidence or inference.

On its own, it is the nature of circumstantial evidence for more than one explanation to still be possible. Inference from one piece of circumstantial evidence may not guarantee accuracy. Circumstantial evidence usually accumulates into a collection, so that the pieces then become corroborating evidence. Together, they may more strongly support one particular inference over another. An explanation involving circumstantial evidence becomes more valid as proof of a fact when the alternative explanations have been ruled out.

Did the person have trouble with bowel blockages? Here, I'm just speaking from my own experience. There are various medical problems that cause people to vomit, other than food or alcohol poisoning. The point being that people shouldn't jump to conclusions without knowing more facts.

take some sea sickness pills if you're feeling nauseated...
seriously, if Brown has a significant record of violence beyond what was seen in the store video, it would certainly be relevant ... not to advance an argument that he deserved to be murdered by Wilson but simply because it would make it much more plausible that he might just have assaulted Wilson.
It's going to come out if this comes to trial.
And ask yourself a question, suppose Wilson had a long record of complaints by minorities against him, wouldn't that be relevant in determining if he was likely or not to have shot a defenseless and totally innocent Wilson? I think it would be.

but come on...if Brown had a record for violence beyond what we saw in the store video, it would certainly make it more plausible that he assaulted the police officer.
It's relevant...just like is Wilson had a long list of complaints about him calling civilians racist names. That would certainly make it more plausible that the shooting of Brown was not justified.

The police officer didn't stop Brown and his friend because of the robbery (although that's a bit murky).
But Brown certainly knew what he had done very shortly before, and if like most people in this world he didn't like the idea of being arrested and detained, assaulting the cop is certainly one possible option he could have taken.
Again, I'm not saying this is what happened. But it's one of the possibilities.

So what does that have with making the WH look bad. He was 18. He was part of an epidemic of young black men being gunned down. As others have said, this has all gotten bigger than Michael Brown. I applaud the WH for showing they care about the fact that people of color have to have "the talk" with their sons about encountering police in the hope of keeping them alive. It's hard to imagine what it's like to have your son gunned down for holding a toy gun in Walmart.

I think that if Brown had a serious criminal record in his past and that gets disclosed and if it turns out that there are witnesses who convincingly rebut the claims of the individuals who claimed to have seen it all and that it was murder, it would be deeply embarrassing to the White House.
I would feel the same way if for some benighted reason, the White House had decided to embrace Wilson as a heroic cop and invited him and his family to the White House for lunch with the President. I would have said, "let's wait for the evidence before we embrace this guy."
Returning to Brown, sending one person would have been enough...sending three is excessive.

Jeremy Renner is slated to reprise his Bourne Legacy role - as former CIA black ops agent-turned rogue operative, Aaron Cross - in the currently-untitled fifth Bourne franchise installment (a.k.a. Bourne 5). However, before he does, he'll battle the CIA in a very different sort of film: Kill the Messenger, the upcoming drama about real-life journalist Gary Webb's investigation into links between the Reagan-era CIA, the Contra rebels in Nicaragua, and the smuggling of cocaine into the U.S. that contributed to the crack cocaine epidemic during the 1980s.

The newly-released Kill the Messenger trailer paints a short and sweet portrait of the film's narrative - namely, Webb uncovering what appears to be a vast conspiracy, which results in Renner's protagonist becoming the target of the powers that be, who would prefer to keep said skeletons tucked away in their closet.

Webb's articles for the San Jose Mercury News - published in 1999 as the book "Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion" - have long been controversial; not just because of Webb's unnerving assertions, but also because even some of those who were closer to him have questioned his accuracy in reporting - and whether or not Webb is really someone who should be considered "heroic." Then again, Webb asserted that his co-workers and editors were often not supportive and unable to process his findings rationally - so it kind of depends on who's telling the story.

Kill the Messenger director Michael Cuesta helped to paint a complicated portrait of the CIA during his time as an executive producer and director on Showtime's Homeland (he's also worked on TV shows like Elementary and Dexter), so hopefully he'll manage to do as much here - rather than simplify Webb's story to a basic good journalist vs. bad government drama.

about Brown and some people seem to believe that him being black was enough to justify him being killed. But I wonder if you will concede that there's some pretty ugly talk that goes the other way...stuff like "all police are racists," "the police should all be killed" etc.

Power of White Racists compared to the power of people calling them out is skewed. As for citizens saying all police should be killed, I think you are describing a very marginal group that would get gunned down instantly in any confrontation with the police.

I have not seen a single instance of "all police are racist OR should be killed"

Not here. Not on Facebook. Not anywhere.
Do those people exist? I have no doubt they probably do but I would no more waste my time with them than I would the ones calling Ferguson protesters "animals". Sadly I've seen quite a bit of that.

Concha then went on to enumerate the second and presumably more important aspect.

"More importantly we'll look at integrity...Every host's job is to present two sides of every story and let the audience come to their own conclusions."

Wait, what? What is he talking about here, specifically? Either you're doing an opinion show like Hannity does every damn night or you're doing a news broadcast. If you're doing opinion, then both sides aren't required, nor can the audience sort it out because it's not fact-based. It's opinion.

If, on the other hand, you're doing a news broadcast, you have a duty to the facts. This is where so much journalism fails. In their zeal to present "both sides" they put on ridiculous stories like "death panels," in order to appear as though there's no bias.

Example: Jim Hoft's clumsy effort to fabricate facts this week cried out for journalists to actually get some real facts from real sources, on the record. That never happened, leaving the door wide open for a Battle of the Anonymous Sources, where Hannity/Hoft/Fox News' anonymous sources say Darren Wilson suffered a "blowout of his left orbital socket" while CNN's anonymous sources say that's absolutely untrue.

But Concha wants the audience to sort it out. Yeah. Pick your trusted news and go with that, but really, until there's something more concrete, no one knows. I tend to disbelieve Fox because Hoft felt the need to invent evidence to support his story, and Hoft is a known liar who makes things up to drive traffic into his site, which Drudge cheerfully does for him.

The President is sending three White House officials to the funeral service of Michael Brown in St. Louis on Monday:

Leading the group for Monday's service will be the chairman of the My Brother's Keeper Task Force, Broderick Johnson. My Brother's Keeper is an Obama initiative that aims to empower young minorities. Johnson is also the secretary for the Cabinet.

Also attending will be the deputy director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, Marlon Marshall, and an adviser for the office, Heather Foster.

you should click on some of the links. Conservatives have bought every lie put out there by their bosses hook line and sinker. What an embarrassment for them if they had the decency to even be embarrassed which they don't.

Actually not in Marin, but the south Napa Valley just down the road from the epicenter. And yeah, it was a good sized quake as it woke me up, lol!~ My old house held up just fine and I have electric etc. One cat and the dog were unphased, the other cat and bird were quite disturbed. The old church behind me still has the bell tower, so I'm happy :) Wineries, an olive oil company and some historic buildings didn't fare so well :(

Oh and Ball canning jars hit the floor from 6ft up and didn't break! That would have been a mess of jams, salsas and sauces mixed with glass if they did :P Luckily, my dishes are in the cabinet under the counter, so that was good.

And it will be for some time, according to Brian Schellman, a spokesman for the St. Louis County police department. Schellman told TIME that the department does not intend to release the "investigative" component of the incident report, the part that details Wilson's version of events.

Schellman said that under the Missouri State "Sunshine" Law, the department was not required to release the information during a pending investigation. As a result, Wilson's account of what happens will remain confidential unless it is presented by a prosecutor, Schellman said.

"We will not release it," said Schellman, who noted that this is the county's normal procedure. "This isn't any different than a typical larceny from a local convenience store."

Wilson never filed a report on the incident, according to the office of the St. Louis County prosecutor. The case was quickly turned over to the county at the request of local police. According to the document, the St. Louis County police entered the incident report on Aug. 19, 10 days after the shooting. It was approved for release the following morning.

It is all a little terrifying though to me also. It really seems to me that if people across the nation weren't losing their minds over this, that there would be no substantial investigations and the truth would never be revealed due to a flurry of denial and evidence lost. And this seems to be a pattern in some parts of the country for law enforcement.

I don't want to live in a nation without law enforcement, at the same time law enforcement has some issues that must be faced and resolved.

Are not so thorough. I have never lived anyplace where I feared the local law enforcement like I do here. But you must have much more training in Wyoming and Colorado than you need here. And no psych eval here.

When I lived in Wyoming there was a local wannabe who had the required college education and also served 4 yrs in the military, he applied for every local law enforcement job available but could not pass the psych evaluation and he was never hired.

My fat disturbed sociopath nephew wants to be a state cop more than anything. He even lost 40 lbs at one point in hopes of it helping him get in. He has failed the psyche eval twice.
He was only allowed to take it a second time because his grandfather, my brother in law, has political connections in the state and personally spoke to the governor. Really.

Honestly it has renewed a bit if my faith in the screening process. We are talking about a person who has said in an unguarded moment that he likes working as a EMT, in addition to his on and off local deputy duties, because he likes dealing with mangled dead bodies.

Out of me then and still does. The knob is still a cop. Well on and off. He was in a bit of trouble recently for stopping people and acting like a cop, because he is allowed to have the lights on his vehicle, when he in fact was not a cop.

That incident may have been key to the state police saying something like "are you freaking kidding me?"

An Enterprise police officer is a H.S.diploma, a background check, 18 weeks at their "police academy", 10 weeks of field training, and pass the PT test. No degrees in criminal justice or anything more involved needed.

If you can afford my lawyer they won't attempt to foist bull on you once they discover he represents you. If the town of Enterprise does foist some bull on one of his clients he appeals it all the way up to sanity. They hate him. I was told I was a bully when I hired him but as the years unroll it is obviously that the Enterprise yokels at the courthouse are the bullies and he doesn't let them get away with it. You can have all the justice you can afford here.

If one counts the 12:02 dispatch as Wilson's backup (and there is significant uncertainty regarding that), the next dispatch is 12:05, another at 12:10, etc... By 12:45 there were 6 units that had responded as ON SCENE. The call was upgraded in the system to the incident address at 12:04 and the call type was upgraded at 12:11 from "police service" (probably the sick call with the uncertainty caveat) to "domestic in progress" then immediately to "disturbance in progress."

It's again important to note that the times reflected do not established when the dispatch received the information, but when they entered it into the computer system.

1201--The disturbance call was received.
1202--The patrol unit was dispatched to respond to disturbance.
1202--The patrol unit advised that it was on scene.
1935--The patrol unit advised that it had left the scene.

I'm provisionally assuming that the first-on-scene patrol officer was the one dispatched referencing Wilson's alleged call for backup, since the dispatch time and arrive time are the same. There is significant uncertainty regarding this assumption. It is also quite plausible that the response time was a product of the strong-arm robbery BOLO that is alleged to have occurred near-in-time to the incident.

A 1201 initial report time makes it fairly unlikely that the dispatcher learned of the event by watching the news, remembering that the robbery report was made at 1151.

So in those videos those are mainly the County Police arriving right after the shooting -- not so much the Ferguson PD.

12:07 the County Police get the call, 12:10 EMT passing by checks the body as seen on the video, and then the County Police begin arriving at 12:15 as seen on video.

So then when the County Police arrive on the scene where is Officer Wilson and where is his SUV????

We see the body on the ground as County Police arrive but no Ferguson SUV and no officer Wilson.

Were both already back at the Ferguson police station by then???

Were they trying to avoid the County Police???

Maybe they had some more work to do -- on his injuries and on his story??

It was not until 12:43 p.m. that detectives from the county police force were notified of the shooting, according to county police records. ...
The detectives arrived around 1:30, and an hour later, a forensic investigator ...

It was not until 12:43 p.m. that detectives from the county police force were notified of the shooting, according to county police records. ...
The detectives arrived around 1:30, and an hour later, a forensic investigator ...

So here's what we learn:

Though the County Police begin arriving on the scene at 12:15 after being called at 12:07, officer Wilson didn't call them to report the officer involved shooting, as is required by law, until 12:43 and where he was by then one can only surmise.

a perfect example of what is wrong with the tea party. They don't want the facts. They want to hold on to their fantasy world longer and longer.

In bizarro tea party land it's terrible to show up on a ranch of a proven criminal someone who has been through a court system and been proven guilty time and again and but it's okay to believe that someone is guilty automatically based on rumors not facts.

And if this police officer is such a bad judge of what is dangerouns and is not, he should be taken off the police force. He's not fit to be an officer.

The five-minute video released by ISIS, now the focus of intensive forensic analysis by British and American authorities, is narrated in part by the killer, wearing a black hood with eyeholes, who addresses the camera in English before putting a knife in his left hand to the journalist's throat. The video then skips ahead to show Mr. Foley's severed head atop his corpse in the sand, with what appears to be a different knife lying nearby. [Jeralyn ahead of the curve, as usual]

Speculation among terrorism experts and the British news media has focused on a number of militants known to have joined ISIS, including a 24-year-old London rapper named Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary. Mr. Bary's father, Adel Abdel Bary, was extradited to the United from Britain in 2012 after a long legal battle to face terrorism charges in Al Qaeda's bombing of two American Embassies in East Africa in 1998.

The NYT story suggests that this is more a recuirtment video for British Militants, than anything else.. The fact that a Westerner did the deed, or may have done the deed, or probably did not do the deed but was a stand in for the Preview of the deed.

"Did you see what we can do? There is more!!" wrote one ISIS supporter monitored by SITE. Another wrote, "I was happy to see the beheading of that kaafir." Kaafir is the Arabic word for unbeliever.

To judge by Twitter and other social media, "British militants have been impressed that this was done by a British guy," said Raffaello Pantucci, director of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute and author of an upcoming book about Muslim extremists in Britain.

the ISIS/ISIL threat has been exaggerated the one thing that really gives me pause is the reported number of "western" recruits. Not just British but many French and others from all over Europe and most likely some Americans.
These are apparently people who can re-enter these countries with little or no trouble.

Razul Islam is understood to be on a list of suspected British Jihadists whom the security services are comparing with the footage of Mr Foley's killer, a British man known as "John" described as the leader of a British cell of jihadists known as "The Beatles".

Investigators will also be keen to rule out Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary, 23, a former rapper from Maida Vale, west London, who went to Syria last year and later tweeted a picture of himself holding up a severed head. He has a similar accent to the man who killed Mr Foley, and has a similar build and skin tone.

To address the case of the evangelical Christian, Wheaton College, the Obama Administration, last Friday, offered a rule that goes into effect right a way allowing a religious college or non-profit to notify the Dept of HHS of its religious objections to pay for insurance coverage for contraceptives. HHS would then contact insurance companies and arrange the birth control coverage at no cost to the employer or employees (the insurance company is reimbursed by the government). Previously, the groups were to notify the insurance companies directly--- a "complicit" and burdensome step to which they objected. If a particular form is objectionable, employers can just inform the government.

Another rule proposed attempts to accommodate the Hobby Lobby case--a business that meets the definition of small, privately held, and not publicly traded. Such owners with religious objections would also be able to contact the government (directly) to express their objections. The proposed rule is subject to a comment period of 60-days.

These rules are unlikely to satisfy all objectors, but is more likely to comply with the Supreme Court as they follow almost to the letter the "rule suggestions" of the majority in its novel application of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act by its interpretation that the federal government may not "substantially burden a person's exercise of religion." Moreover, in my view, the redressing of a grievance to the government, even if not entirely responsive to the particular view, should not be a burdensome. Of course, if directness is to be the defining virtue, Congress should amend, or, preferably, repeal the RFRA.

Is SOP for ppj.
Toss out some reeking chum in the hopes of starting a - no, you are -- no, YOU are - back and forth until the thread is full.
Personally I do my best to ignore him but sometimes it's just not possible.
Arguing with him is OTOH the very definition of peeing into the wind.

"The straw that broke the camel's back, an officer shot at a female. She was stopped for a traffic violation. She had a child in the back [of the] car and was probably worried about getting locked up. And this officer chased her down Highway 70, past city limits, and took a shot at her. Just ridiculous."

Police faced a series of lawsuits for using unnecessary force, Stichnote said. One black resident, Cassandra Fuller, sued the department claiming a white Jennings police officer beat her in June 2009 on her own porch after she made a joke. A car had smashed into her van, which was parked in front of her home, and she called police. The responding officer asked her to move the van. "It don't run. You can take it home with you if you want," she answered. She said the officer became enraged, threw her off the porch, knocked her to the ground and kicked her in the stomach.

a swinging arm at that distance, especially since all the LEO training I'm aware of is geared to shoot at the center of the person you're targeting, and not to wing them in the leg or arm like something out of a cowboy western.

And it raises the question again as to why a presumably rational teen would run towards someone who is pointing a gun at them, and an LEO, to boot.

spiel couldn't help but put me in mind of slimeball DA Doug Mulder's speech about the "Thin Blue Line" in the Randall Adams trial. The withholding of exculpatory evidence in a capital case be damned! it was still an inspiring speech..

Just so can the bottom-feeding, race-baiting Jim, with his portrayals of Obama with a bone in his nose, and claims of Holder ties to the Black Panthers, still set our hearts a flutter with his stentorian tones..

links to Alex Jones, GlobalResearch and others. He's saying that the CIA is behind ISIS and the neo-cons are running the show behind Obama's back. Ugh. I don't have much time to look at all those horrible websites. Does anyone know anything about those ideas about the CIA and ISIS? Maybe my policy of ignoring him is the best.

And I know many are frightened that Obama will end up making a military commitment vs. humanitarian commitment. I just don't see it though.

I think the CIA is busy though. They are busy keeping tabs on ISIL fighters, foreign fighters joining, gathering information on who the leaders are, are they all extremists? And we have NATO allies involved too. I would think it would be very difficult to run an operation meant to herd the President into something without him knowing it and not be discovered.

Kurtz traces responsibility for the "Snowden Hoax" to a German website, www.shababek.de, and Kareem al-Baidani.

Glenn Greenwald and others state there is no evidence in the Snowden cache that ISIS is linked to the CIA, Mossad or any other intelligence agency.

Greenwald points to Ben Wizner, a lawyer with the ACLU, who retweets spy novelist Jeremy Duns. Duns provides a link to the Kurtz blog post claiming to document the "Snowden Hoax" and a lack of definitive evidence connecting ISIS to the CIA or Mossad and pointing back to Iranian propaganda.

like one of those oath keeper or tea party conspiracy theorists. You might try sending some links debunking it and seeing if that works--probably not. I had one of these people sending me stuff and I kept debunking it and also laughing at her. She finally quit.

It's all about this one world conspiracy theory and they try to make every event fit into their nonsense.

may be a more sensible thing to do. However, I have also wondered many a time like a few others in TL about how ISIS became what they did in such a short period of time.

I will not be surprised if there is a Saudi connection to it. The Arab spring revolts may have led the Saudi monarchy to think that they may be a future domino to fall. They may therefore have encouraged the most extreme people in Saudi Arabia to go and create a Caliphate somewhere else to thwart a future rebellion within Saudi Arabia from these same elements. The Saudis are like Pakistan of the Middle East. They are officially our allies but more often than not support elements that are inimical to the principles we espouse or even our strategic interests based on realpolitik considerations. Here is a link about that country that shows why we should be concerned.

There is also a history that leads to my suspicions.link After the seizure of the Grand mosque in 1979, the Saudi monarchy spent billions of dollars to export Salafism around the globe in the following decades so that attention of jihadists would be occupied elsewhere instead of overthrowing the House of Saud.

Apart from the "hoax" (and various forms of the classic backstabbing that involves) ... apart from the labyrinth, the potential Saudi Arabian role does not seem that far-flung to me. Why? Historical patterns.

That's where the change must start because without it we will either have more Brown's or we will learn to tolerate more Brown's.

You may want to learn about racism in the south and places like St. Louis.

Where things must change is White Power Police et al. believing that Black men and women are inferior race, who should be subjugated .

The nearby town of Jennings was forced to dismantle their entire PD because of abject racism. Wilson came from that PD.

When you have a town PD like Ferguson, that depends on traffic stops for 25% of their budget, and uses racial profiling to inform their traffic stops because black people are less likely to be able to afford an attorney to fight the charges and will be find per guilty charge, you have a problem that needs to change.

Racism is the problem here. People like Wilson are the problem, not victims like Brown.

Our people of Birmingham are a peaceful people and we never have any trouble here unless some people come into our city looking for trouble. And I've never seen anyone yet look for trouble who wasn't able to find it.

are not taxable income. Nor are they deductible contributions, of course, by the donor. The entity or individuals that created the GoFundMe site, however, may have taxable income, depending on how it is organized and administered.

government institution that fosters a culture that treats people of color differently than it does whites; that institutional culture of racism appears to be "where Wilson is from." He left one police department that was so bad it had to be disbanded, and found a job in another one that ought to suffer the same fate.

The statistics don't lie. They tell a tale of a police force that funds its budget on the backs of mostly poor black people.

It's not that the casual racism that still exists in the private sector is okay - it absolutely isn't - it's that the cretins who feel special because they can throw around the n-word, or post pictures of the president with a bone in his nose, don't have the power to affect people's lives in the same way as do people in positions of authority, and who, in this case, also happen to carry guns.

Whether you have or haven't seen more racism than others is irrelevant; it's that you foster it that matters.

Four years ago the Ferguson PD arrested a man (later found to be mistaken identity,) beat him to a bloody pulp while in custody, forced him to stay in jail under barbaric conditions because there was no one available to arraign him, and, after being compelled to release him, charged him with, "property damage," or, "bleeding on their uniforms," caused by the beating they inflicted on him.

This would be too outlandish even for an Onion piece, yet, it seems to be true.

This is cute. They do adore and protect each pear as it grows on the branch. It is a luxury in Korea to have a pear. They placed a protective cone around each set pear to grow in when I was there over ten years ago :).

* Between 2000 and 2010, a total of 335,609 people died from guns -- more than the population of St. Louis, Mo. (318,069), Pittsburgh (307,484), Cincinnati, Ohio (296,223), Newark, N.J. (277,540), and Orlando, Fla. (243,195) (sources: CDF, U.S. Census; CDC)
One person is killed by a firearm every 17 minutes, 87 people are killed during an average day, and 609 are killed every week. (source: CDC)

And FWIW, I have shot a pistol before, so please quit making statements about me you have no documentation for, unless your goal is to embarrass yourself and win some sympathy points from the peanut gallery.

In the US the only kimchi I have seen available for purchase is cabbage. In Korea, the restaurants make their own kimchi and many different vegetables are used like cucumber and white radish. There was a kimchi I had in Korea made out of greens that I still don't know what it was. I thought I would have it more times and learn about it but we only had it served to us once and so far nobody knows what it was. I did ask someone at the table that night what it was who was Korean but even she did not know. The delicious family secret I guess. Kimchi recipes can be very different too from one creator to the next. Some Korean restaurants serve cucumber and radish.